Circular dependency in Service but not in Power BI Desktop

[JenWilson]

My reports had been running fine in workspace (updating, working from a schedule refresh, etc.) Yesterday, (01/31) three of my reports were no longer refreshing due to a circular dependency error being detected (all were related to a circular dependency - see example error message below). However, when I work in the file in Power BI Desktop, I do not have this issue and I am able to refresh the file just fine. Again, the reports were working fine as written up until yesterday. Does anyone know if something changed in the Service? 

Data source error: A circular dependency was detected: Table1[Table1], 6fcf0e60-3c80-4661-a2fc-d978d44b7357, Table1[Date], Table1[Table1].
Cluster URI: WABI-US-NORTH-CENTRAL-B-redirect.analysis.windows.net
Activity ID: 612825e6-6de9-46c8-9190-a0ac5397564c
Request ID: bb14b4ed-e579-fd76-86ff-e229c1853d1d
Time: 2024-02-01 13:54:21Z

[v-yifanw-msft]

Hi @JenWilson ,

Based on what you've described, the circular dependency error you're experiencing may be due to differences in the way Power BI Services and Power BI Desktop handle certain data model scenarios.

In addition to the troubleshooting perspective provided by @aj1973 . You can also take some of the following steps to troubleshoot and hopefully resolve the issue:

1. Think back to any recent changes made to the report or data model, as they may have inadvertently introduced circular dependencies. If any changes were made, consider rolling them back to see if that solves the problem.
2. Ensure that all data source settings and privacy levels are properly configured in the Power BI service. Sometimes changes to privacy levels can lead to unexpected errors.Power BI Services handles privacy levels differently than the desktop version.
3. Double-check the relationships in the data model to ensure that there are no circular references. To do this, view the relationships in Power BI Desktop and verify that no table is indirectly related to itself.
4. If the above steps do not reveal any issues, try republishing the report from Power BI Desktop to the service. This can sometimes resolve issues that occur due to temporary server-side issues.

Hope our advice can be of help to you.

Best Regards,

Ada Wang

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[JenWilson · Accepted solution]

@v-yifanw-msft late last week the issue seemed to resolve itself. The only thing we can think of is that Microsoft made some change and then reverted back resolving the issue for our reporting. 

[aj1973]

HI @JenWilson 

It could be a DAX measure that is causing the circular dependency and is detected by the Service and not the Desktop.

Avoiding circular dependency errors in DAX - SQLBI